Adam Mickiewicz

The Castle Ruins At Balaklava - Poem by Adam Mickiewicz

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These castles, whose remains are strewn in heaps for miles, Once graced and guarded you, Crimea the ungrateful! Today they sit upon the hills, each like a great skullIn which reptiles reside or men worse than reptiles.

Let’s climb a tower, search for crests upon worn tiles, For an inscription or a hero’s name, the fatefulBane of armies now forgotten by the faithful, A wizened beetle wrapped in vines below the aisles.

Here Greeks wrought Attic ornaments upon the walls, From which Italians would cast Mongols into chains, And where the Mecca-bound once stopped to pray and beg.

Today above the tombs the shadow of night falls, The black-winged buzzards fly like pennants over plains, As if towards a city ever touched by plague.

— translated from the Polish by Leo Yankevichfirst appeared in the Sarmatian Review